Laser is one of the landmark inventions of the mid-20th century.

The word laser has always inspired awe and mystery right from its beginning. Being called everything from the death ray, to light fantastic over time Lasers evolved to be the supertool of the 1980s. In its early years Lasers remained largely within military an academia and remained as a solution for problems unknown, soon novel uses were discovered where Laser was and is the only answer. To study the timeline of Laser evolution would imply considering development of Laser devices and applications. Since the early years both have progressed hand in hand. Application developers used existing lasers and gave laser developers feedback on new features needed to make applications practical. As applications evolved, their requirements also evolved. The roots of lasers can be charted in the quantum theory of radiation proposed by Albert Einstein in 1916 wherein he proposed that photons can stimulate the emission of identical photons from other atoms. Though evidence of the same was reported as early as 1928, the physicists of that time sidelined this effect as negative absorption. No significant discoveries were made till 1951 when Charles Townes conceptualized the maser and followed it up with the first microwave maser in 1954 along with James Gordon. A burst of maser development ensued. Some physicists thought of extending the maser concept to higher frequencies. Since the millimeter waves, terahertz range and far IR frequency ranges were largely underdeveloped the next logical choice was the optical range. The optical maser was conceived by Townes in 1957. In 1958 in a joint paper published in Physical Review Letters, Townes and Arthur L. Schawlow, theoretically showed that masers could be made to operate in the optical and infrared region and proposed how this could be accomplished. The acronym Laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) was coined by Gordon Gould in his notebook where he drew a sketch of laser complete with what is now known as a Fabry Perot Resonator. While the laser was conceived in 1957, researchers still remained in dark as to how to create population inversion, and what materials to use as active medium. Theodore Maiman began investigating ruby because he had worked with it to design a microwave maser. While others disregarded the possibility of using ruby as an active medium since it was a three level system, Maiman made his own measurements and found ruby fluorescence was actually efficient. HE constructed the first laser using a cylinder of synthetic ruby 1 cm in diameter and 2 cm long, with the ends silver coated to make them reflective to serve as Fabry-Perot resonator. He used photographic flashlamps as the lasers pump source. He tested his design on May 16, 1960 as he gradually increased the voltage applied to the flashlamps until the pulses of red light grew brighter and sharper and the spectral profile resembled that expected of a laser. The ruby laser inspired Peter Sorokin and Mirek Stevenson to make the first four level laser system. This second laser used calcium fluoride doped with uranium as an active medium and used flashlamp pumping, but this did not find many practical applications as it needed cryogenic cooling and emitted in IR. Soon the first continuous wave laser, the Helium Neon laser was designed and operated by Javan, Herriott and Bennett in December 1960. They used a 1m long highly reflecting cavity and used electrical discharges for pumping.

The versatility of the photon the fundamental ingredient of laser light, extends from the ultra low energies required in biology research to the creation of very high temperatures as found in stars by focusing huge amounts of energy. Thus the field of photonics spans this whole range.